HURRICANE SANDY: Worst to come Tuesday

After scattered road closures Monday from Hurricane Sandy, local and statewide officials have prepared for more of the same, if not worse, Tuesday.

“This is just the beginning, tonight starts the heavy wind,” said New Jersey Department of Transportation spokesman Joe Dee. “It leaves us predicting that there will be a lot of downed trees and branches tomorrow.”

Mitchell Gaines, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the sustained winds and rain from the storm would pose dangers throughout Monday night and into Tuesday.

“People don’t want to park next to a tree unless they have to,” he said.

Police and first responders reported several dozen street closures in the Trenton area over the course of Monday. They came from downed trees, power lines and occasionally flooding.

In addition, mass transit, government offices, schools and many ancillary government services have shut down from the storm. Trenton, Robbinsville, Hamilton, Ewing and Lawrence schools were closed Monday and closed Tuesday as well.

Trenton and many other municipalities announced yesterday they would close their offices Tuesday. NJ Transit, SEPTA and AMTRAK all announced reduced or cancelled service on Monday.

Gaines said the possibility of flooding in low-lying or flood-prone areas would increase over the course of Monday night and into Tuesday morning.

“This is a pretty impressive storm that continues to move in our direction,” he said. “We’ve got a lot going on with the storm.”

Over the course of Monday, the Department of Transportation dealt with some 91 problems on roads due to the weather. Dee said they had to close 21 different roads in at least one direction, or both. He said they had more than 800 staff working this week to deal with the impact of the storm.

“Our real work will be going underway tomorrow,” he said. “That 91 total incidents will be significantly higher.”

Princenton Township closed more than half a dozen roads after trees and power lines went down in the storm.

John Ricci, the business administrator for Hamilton Township, said township crews had cleared up several dozen trees in the township, and would continue to do so through the night and into Tuesday.

He said that as long as the high winds persisted the thousands of residents without power would likely have to live without it until Wednesday or later.

“Everybody needs to hunker down and stay calm,” he said.

Last week, weather experts, including Louis Uccellini, Director, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction, compared the storm to the “Perfect Storm” of 1991.

The worst of the storm hit the New Jersey coast Monday, flooding many areas and roadways. The Department of Transportation closed more than 100 miles of the Garden State Parkway yesterday, after several instances of flooding along the route.